Swings & Roundabouts

Immigration in Briain: What needs to be done for smoother integration?

As you can see, I am not letting go of this topic! Thing is, I need to sound quite knowledgeable about it and I have just about a week’s time. Which is where you, my lovely blog readers come in. Please log onto my show on BlogTalkRadio and click on the appropriate button to speak to the host – me! All you need to do is tell your own immigration story. Location, your stance – nothing matters. You might be living in North Wales and might be from Eastern Europe and your neighbours couldn’t be nicer – ring and tell me. Or, if you are a Chinese living in Midwestern America and your white brethren are colder than Arctic ice, ring and tell me.

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Tags: radiochat, immigration, britain

Britain is all caught up with the news of teacher Gillian Gibbons being thrown into jail in Sudan, facing a 15-day jail term followed by deportation. At one point, it was reported that she might be looking at the business end of a whip – 40 times. Her crime? Letting her class of 7 year olds name their class teddy bear ‘Mohammad’. All over the country loud, disbelieving gasps can be heard, accompanied by the typical ‘they must be joking, surely!’ Foreign Office is scrabbling about trying to stop the Sudanese government from lashing out on the poor bewildered woman.

One of the guys in my course even made fun of it the other day. That made me think – they don’t get it, do they?

While it is tragic that the poor lady has been thrown in jail, laughing about it or passing disparaging comments about the attitude of ‘those people’ doesn’t help matters. Much as the British might see it as nothing short of ridiculous to get het up by something so trivial, the matter couldn’t be more serious to the other party. If one looks at it from the Sudanese government’s point of view, the teacher has committed a blasphemy, by naming a teddy bear after the Prophet. So, in their minds, she deserves to be punished. In fact, had it been a Sudanese citizen who had committed this act, retribution would have been swift.

This is not the first time the West has been caught with its foot caught in a religious quagmire. A few year’s back, an enterprising outfit in America called Sitting Pretty released a range of toilet seats named, ‘Sacred Seats’. The collection carried images of Lord Ganesha and Goddess Kali in glorious technicolour. Retailing for a whopping sum of $130, the line was augmented by such compelling prose such as this:

“Ganesha the Hindu elephant god, removes all obstacles, destroys evil and provides you with protection on your journey.”

Say goodbye to constipated bowels! Taking the dump and prayers at one go – what more could a harried Hindu want?

Of course, the Hindu community got into a major uproar and the line was withdrawn. A while later, a San Francisco company released ‘designer footwear’ carrying images of, you guessed it, Ganesha and assorted members of his illustrious family. Outraged squawks from all quarters made sure the shoes weren’t released into the general market. Despite this, flip-flops and Hindu gods were once again merged in 2003 by American Eagle Outfitters and the result was pretty much the same . Then there was this French shoe manufacturer who put pictures of Rama onto shoe fronts.

Why would someone do it? While one can arrive at a whole lot of answers, what it all boils down to is that the people behind these never realised (or cared enough to realise) what these images represent and what kind of sentiment they carry for the millions of Hindus around the world. Unfortunately enough, no one seemed to understand the reason behind the furore caused by these incidents so that the circumstances need never be repeated again.

What do all this have to do with this divorced teacher and her impending, frightening future in Sudan? Personally, nothing. She merely went with her students’ wishes, the papers say – after all, why wouldn’t she let them name their toy? That she did not understand the weight the name Mohammad carries and therein lay her misfortune.

The teacher’s inadvertent error just reiterates the fact that it is high time the Western countries start taking into account other cultures, customs and religions. It is that classic rule “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” To this, one more statement could be added: “do not judge everyone or everything by your standards”.

Does the teacher deserve what she gets? No, no, emphatically no. Do the general Western populace need an education on what goes and what doesn’t, with respect to the world’s religions? A definite yes.

Gordon Brown’s government has been blundering about since his first day at the office. The Northern Rock crisis hit them long and hard and they have barely got past that. But with the latest ‘offering’, they have taken incompetence to levels barely scaled before.

They have only gone and lost our child benefit records. All of it. All 25 million of it. Gone. Child benefit records, that contain everything from the names, national insurance numbers, addresses, date of births, bank accounts. Know what the funniest bit about this whole thing is? The Chancellor Alistair Darling stressing “there was no evidence of misuse of the data.”

Really? That’s okay then – I can heave a big sigh of relief and go back to surfing the Web.

What really happened?

Apparently, on October 18, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service) sent the child benefits data to the National Audit Office, in two CDs, by unrecorded and unregistered post! The CDs, containing the details of 25 million individuals, failed to turn up at the NAO and when NAO complained, a second set was sent to them.

What a bunch of imbeciles! Who are these idiots who run the government? They send vital information, in CDs, by unregistered post and when that fails to turn up, instead of kicking shit, calmly send another copy over! And now, they expect everyone to be relaxed because they assure us that “there is no evidence the data has gone to criminals”. Well, we won’t know that, will we, until huge sums of cash go missing from our accounts?

The blame game has started already – the Chancelleor blamed junior officials at HMRC for the fiasco; HMRC Chairman Paul Gray has resigned already. The Tories are baying for the Chancellor’s blood, asking him to resign too.

How serious is this?

Very. The general public is really worried as to what is going to happen. The data in the lost discs contain real juicy details and any crook would give an arm and a leg to get his grubby mitts on them. Even though the discs are supposed to be ‘password protected’ and the data is in an ‘encrypted form’, how much time would it take for a determined fraudster to break it?

Banks are trying their best to assure the public that the information contained on the discs are not enough for anyone to access their bank accounts. But there are other ways of perpetrating fraud. Identity theft is a big deal now and for those in the game, this is manna from heaven, Using someone’s name, address and date of birth, a crook can take out credit cards, loans, mobile phones etc, for starters. David Hill, senior security consultant at red24 says to the Times, “having a national insurance number is as good as having a passport.”

Worryingly, our children’s data is in there too – including their dates of birth. What is there to prevent sickos from targetting the children?

While Darling has glibly said people ought to check their bank accounts for “irregular activity”, what protection does Joe Public have against the identity theft? From identity theft, organized crime is just a step away. Immigration, driving licences, id cards, NI numbers – anything and everything could come under attack.

So what can one do?

There are organizations like CIFAS that can help one fight identity fraud. CIFAS is the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service and will be able to advise on protection of identity and what to do in case of identity theft. Email them at protective.registrationuk@equifax.com. You can also register with a credit reference agency like MyCallCredit, who will, for a fee, monitor your credit and would alert you periodically. Any changes or irregular activity, you would be contacted immediately by the agency and you can react proactively.

The UK Payments Association has released a leaflet for those concerned about the HMRC data theft. The leaflet, according to the APACS website, contains “questions and answers, as well as top tips on spotting and stopping ID theft”.

A special hotline has also been set up and the number for that is 0845 302 1444.

or Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada has become super-easy now, thanks to the Google Indic Transliteration tool. This is a no-mess, no-fuss device and all you need to start typing in any of these Indian languages are the Ctrl and g keys – and knowledge of the language, of course!

I dearly love to write in my mother tongue but installing the font everytime I changed my machine proved to be a headache. I work from my laptop (Windows) and desktop (Mac) and the font is not Mac friendly. Plus, every time I want to write something from uni, I run into problems if I have to download fonts.

This nifty tool solves all those problems very easily. After all, all you need to do is type the URL and voila, you can get cracking straightaway. It has got some neat add ons, word suggestions that comes up when you are half-way through your typing, to lend a helpful hand by coming up with alternatives. 

If you click on the ‘Edit..’ link, you’d get a window like this:

need I say more? If you are a nitpicker, you could choose to have the whole keyboard displayed as it were, and you could tap tap away.

This tool is supported by both IE and Firefox, thereby making it easy for you to use from a Windows, Mac or Linux based machine.

So what are you waiting for?

It was like a scene from the Twilight Zone; flickering light, damp floors and women in various stages of undress. Within minutes, squeals rent the air as one by one we got stuck into our neoprene suits that seemed at least two sizes too small for each of us.

We were getting ready to go white water rafting. Outside, the weather was a nippy 10 degrees or so and the buffeting wind made it seem worse.

We must be crazy.  

As we walked out, I could see my family huddled over frothy mugs of hot chocolate, in a warm café and here I was, sat outside in the cold, along with few other loonies, getting ready to go out into the chilly waters of the River Nene, in a raft.

I must be insane.  

And to think this was an anniversary gift. Before thirty minutes were out, I would be inclined to believe my instructor, who was guffawing at a few of us lucky sods that got ‘gifted’ this experience and loudly wondered if the beloved in question wasn’t trying to do us in.

The fact that this was an artificially created environment, with none of the dangers of the natural, rock-filled rapids, didn’t instil much courage in me as I stood at the banks of the river, about to jump into the raft. The six of us who were carrying our raft to set it down on the water looked eerily like condemned men carrying their coffins before climbing helpfully into it.

Before we could chicken out though, we could hear the instructor screaming for us to get in. And like docile lambs to the slaughter, we did.

‘Bums on the blue strip’, shouted he. Said strip was on the outer edges of the raft and as such, was in the tipping in zone as far as we were concerned and time and again, one or the other of us would try to plonk ourselves as close to the middle as possible.

We all left shore and safety to the cries of ‘paddle forward’ and went towards the churning waters. The force of the water so close to the motor was such that the raft was wobbling something fierce and we all took turns in landing on the inside of the raft. Better inside than out, we thought to ourselves, even as the guide hollered at us to get paddling.

Down we went the narrow canals and you could literally feel the adrenaline rushing through your veins, with fear following just behind. Though this was an artificially constructed course and the water just came till my thighs, I am not what you’d call an expert swimmer and landing in the freezing, frothing mass didn’t actually suffuse my being with joy. Nonetheless, what a rush it was! We paddled furiously down the course and every time we sailed past the raised ramps and whooshed down, my gut and heart jostled into one another. Our families had all gathered along the grass verges, clicking away at us and we felt like a bunch of celebrities being chased by the paps.

‘Til we went past the highest ‘rapid’ and an overexcited girl sitting ahead pulled the swimmer’s line with gusto and tossed us into the drink.

One minute, we were grinning like a bunch of idiots, feeling supremely cool. Next minute, we were freezing our collective asses off, floating like jetsam in the ice cold waters of the Nene.

Whilst we were all trying to stop our teeth from chattering, our guide calmly brought the floating raft back to us and made us climb back into it. The other guides were heckling at us for being the first ones to get chucked in. After that, it was like a contest to see who could dive in first. Every time we would grab the raft, come coursing down and one or the other of the members of the four or five rafts would topple in and away we’d go.

Other than these random and wholly involuntary slides into the water, the sadists masquerading as our instructors came up with ingenuous ways and means of scaring the pants off us. When it was my turn to sit in the front row of the raft, our guide made us get as close to the churning waters as possible and bend forwards. Into the frothy water! Next, they made us jump in the deepest part of the water and float to the other end. Standing up was impossible as the bottom was slippery and I just kept getting washed away.  

For the finale, we did the ‘rafting rodeo’: two of us sat facing each other in the middle of the raft, not holding on to anything, while the guide took us as close to the churning mass as possible. Needless to say, in we went. But this time, we were in the thick of it so the current kept pulling us in. It took mere seconds for me to panic and I tried my best to kill the other guy who was valiantly trying to pull me out. The poor bloke had come on this cos his girlfriend had gifted this experience to him as a birthday gift and I almost killed him the day before!

After two hours of this, we finally made our way back to the shore. Our guide went around asking each of us if we would do this again. To our own surprise, every one of us shouted: ‘YES!’

Dee had written a post about JKR and Warner Bros’ action against the poor bloke who ran the Harry Potter Lexicon for years. It was irresistible and I started typing out my comment till it got so big, I decided to transfer it here.

My respect for J K Rowling as a writer was directly proportional to the quality of the work she churned out, which started on a slow downward swing post-Goblet of Fire. Undisputably, she created something mega with Potter and blew the whole children’s genre out of the water. But IMO, she peaked with GoF and every book after that was more like an exercise to make money than a creative output.  I mean, what’s with the Order of the Phoenix? ‘More verbose than Bible’ – so bloody what? So many words to explain so few things? Crime against Goddess Saraswati, I call it!

Declaring Dumbledore as gay was nothing but a publicity stunt, to generate a buzz amongst the fans – something to keep them talking till the movie is released. Pottermania has understandably ebbed after the release of the final book and they need something to create a buzz till they can start publicising the movie.

Now this…. she’s just proving that she isn’t different from anybody else.

Most things she’d said are a load of tripe – take the oft-repeated ‘oh I hate this merchandising palaver’ statement. She went to great lengths to assure one and all that she had to put her foot down else we would all have been saddled with a Moaning Myrtle toilet seat the Christmas after Chamber of Secrets. Now, had she been such a do-gooder, why the hell did she say ‘NO MERCHANDISING AND THAT IS IT’? If the thought of Potter dolls and Myrtle loo seats made her shudder so much, why the hell didn’t she say ‘let us do away with the whole thing’. Simple reason – moolah.

That’s what it all has come to. That’s what everything boils down to. Doesn’t matter if you are richer than the Queen. Let’s face it – there cannot be another Potter phenomenon. Even is she turns out another bestseller (who am I kidding?), chances of it reaching the heights of HP is slim. So, I suppose, it is a case of making hay while the sun shines.

Meanwhile, Steve Vander Ark, good luck to you, mate! And good look to all the owners of the other Harry Potter fan sites – keep your fingers crossed that she doesn’t turn her guns on you tomorrow!

One evening last week, I opened the doors to see an old couple with a ‘I accept you though you are not doing the right thing’ kind of look on their faces and a bound book under the crook of their arm. I knew straightaway I was looking at two hardened Bible thumpers and I was going to be there for the better part of an hour arguing theology with them.

I could do what any regular Joe does – slam the door in their faces and carry on with my life. But it was cold out and these two dears looked so earnest that I did not have the heart. So I stood, with my listening cap on, telling myself to keep it zipped if I wanted to get off lightly.

Of course, that is easier said that done. They started off with the usual ‘oooh, we have never seen this design before, what is it?’ ploy, pointing to the picture of Ganesha I had stuck onto our front door. If I had thought that would deter their lot, the past five years had taught me otherwise. I have now learnt that nothing does and these actually help them get their spiel going.

After prattling about various things for about 20 mins, the lady came to the crux of her show:
‘I fully believe in redemption and that, soon we could be called upon to answer for our sins. On that day, we will have to follow the One True God if we are to get salvation. Don’t you think it is better we get started on reading the Bible now, to be better prepared for That Day?’

Now that riled me. I knew it was a mistake unzipping my gob but the calm statement that ‘Christ would save us and you better start brushing up on your gospels’ generally gets my back up. How insulting is that to the dozens of other religions out there! Not to mention the atheists, who are perfectly happy going in their merry own way. What gives them the right to say their way *is* the way and chop, chop now if we want to be redeemed?

So I asked her:

‘Who’s to say that Christianity is the way towards salvation? Isn’t that awfully presumptuous of you to say so? How can you blithely suggest to someone to let go of their beliefs and jump on board with yours? How would you feel if I turned up tomorrow at your doorstep and said ‘Here’s a Koran – start cramming now if you want to be saved!’ Would you be willing?’

Of course they wouldn’t. They politely bobbed their heads up and down, left some leaflets with me to make me ‘see’ and soon went on their way.

Now I really would like to know the answer to my questions. Who’s to say who / what to believe in? Isn’t it your very belief in something that gives it the magic? What right does one have to say ‘no, yours is not the correct belief – follow my path instead’?

I think it is this short-sightedness that is making people rise up in arms. It is all very well for one to assume that one fine day, God is going to land up and make us pay for our sins but stating that boning up on the Bible (or the Gita or whatever) would rescue one from His wrath is a few degrees beyond presumptousness. It is downright smug. When there is so much hoopla about whose God is better and whose sucks, this ‘my way or highway’ attitude can really push people’s buttons the wrong way.

I always thought that no matter what name we call it – God, our Belief, Self – it has power only because we feel so. That being the case, why force the next person to call it by what name it means something to you? Why force him to see your way? Why does the path matter, as long as the destination is the same?

Who has the answers?

Immigration has reared its head again in the UK and the past few days have seen a flurry of news articles on the impact immigrants are going to have on everything from population to house prices to job oppurtunities. While some flee to Britian, escaping from the hell their own country has become, others come here in search of better jobs. Latest population figures stating that by 2031, the country would boast 71 million people, is prompting people to ask the question: how can the UK cope?

With the widening of the EU umbrella, the influx of immigrants into Britain has multiplied manifold. While the government stresses that immigration has “enabled the country’s economic success”, many are not convinced. A recent Channel 4 Despatches documentary showed the economic fears some have about cheaper manual labour from overseas. [Read More...]

[Guest post by Ranju]

For the kick-starter, Rowing is a sport which is highly catching up in the city of Madras, thanks to Madras Boat Club. A membership here costs 50k for a year where in you will have put in 300 hours of rowing. As an annual event, the MBC conducts a Corporate Regatta which is aimed to bring in more people into this sport. In this regard, my friend’s mom, Neela, who has a production house of her own called Madras Houz, decided that it would be great for us to participate. I have done some music – related work such as jingles, sound edits/recording for the company and hence qualify as a part time employee there. Apart from Neela, there are 2 other women working in the company, Uma and Sharmishta (my friend, Neela’s daughter). So the four of us decided that it would be fun and fitness combined for us if we signed up for this year’s Regatta. So that’s exactly what we did. Little did we realize how serious we were becoming about this event. Every morning, 5 hours past midnight saw us standing in Boat Club waiting for boats to be pulled out! Initially, it was quite hard, considering a) I NEED my sleep! b) The inviting(?) smell of the “koovam”. But as the sport got exciting, it didn’t matter. I got over my sleep issue and I just got used to the smell (Honestly, it isn’t that bad, considering they take special care of the course where we row!).

We practiced for 2 long months, almost everyday! The one hour in the morning with extensive coaching by the Club coaches did us real good. We got better by the week and we realized how strong we were becoming and how a sport changes the way you look at your day/week/life. We rowed as 4 on a boat and also took part as two entries (MH A & MH B) in the pairs contest, with two each on one boat.

As race day got closer, we started practicing in the evenings after work as well. Only then did we realize how excited we were about winning the race. Even though the buzz around the club was that 4 of us were going to be a tough team, we still wanted to make sure that we live upto that. There were many teams from all over the city, with 7 women’s only teams, from companies like Sify, Element K, Lion Bridge, JWT, O&M and of course, Madras Houz.

The heats began 3 days before the final race. A race is 750 meters and only two teams can race at a time. Each team had 2 entries for the pairs and we did too! So we got cracking down to the first race. This was easily the scariest part for me as Sharmishta and I were a team and we were to take on corporate oarspersons (not rowers ) who have had experience for about 5-6 years, in our FIRST EVER race!! Quite tense, we sat on the boat and till the second we heard the “Are you ready on the inside? Are you ready on the outside? Are you ready? ROW!” we didn’t realize the amount of energy in us! No more thinking after that and we took her home to the finish in style and won our first race!!! YAYY!

After that, there were 3 more races that we had to clear to reach the finals and we did so quite well! And guess who we met at the finals?? MH B! So us Madras Houz girls won both the first AND second place in our first ever Regatta! Result! Element K won the over all championship as they had a guys team as well. But we were more than delighted with our loot! Huge trophies are always a high! If only we were given a free membership to go with it Even the press paid us a visit on the day of the finals.

A little background on Regatta: this event has been held for the past 80 years and has been successful in churning out few on India’s best oarspersons. The excitement, the festive air, the spirit, the fights, the shrug offs, the pre and post dinners, the beer, which sure excites all the men and everything else that comes along with the package, it sure is a delight to be part of the entire extravaganza.

At the end of the day, all that effort did pay off and I loved the entire experience. Sometimes, even today, I almost stumble out of my sleep at 5 AM in the morning to look for my sneakers to hit the club, and before I realize I still have the Regatta – Hangover, I head back to sleep

If you substitute ‘Internet’ for ‘blogging’, I think that’s where I’m at.